Canoes and kayaks have been around for thousands of years and remain popular today. These human powered personal watercraft are used on lakes, rivers and oceans—pretty much anywhere there is water.
While kayaks are generally more “tippy” than canoes, both suffer from stability issues that can make it difficult to enter and exit without capsizing. This can be especially difficult in areas without suitable shoreline for launching the canoe or kayak. For those individuals having waterfront property with a dock, entry into the canoe or kayak is not much easier. When entering the canoe or kayak, the individual must transfer their bodyweight to the lateral center line of the watercraft in order to avoid tipping. This can be very difficult when stepping off a dock.
In order to make the process of getting into and out of a canoe and kayak easier, a number of devices have been developed. At the most basic, a wooden boat ramp designed with a shallow slope entering the water simulates a beach or the like. The canoe or kayak can be pushed substantially into the water, leaving only a portion on the boat ramp thereby providing a stable surface from which to enter the canoe or kayak. However, these boat ramps are most effective when others are available to hold the end of the canoe or kayak steady while the user enters the watercraft. Those making use of the ramp on their own are still faced with the prospect of capsizing when trying to enter or exit the watercraft or are faced with difficulty in launching the watercraft if it was positioned too high on the ramp in order to make entry easier.
More complicated docking systems have been designed with a built-in sloped launching platform. However, these are large, costly systems that take up a great deal of space and are not adapted to make use of existing docks.
To date, there have been no simple designs for a dock-side cradle to assist with the entry and exit of a canoe or kayak.
Accordingly, it is an object of an embodiment of the present invention to provide a dock-side cradle designed to make dock-side entry and exit of a kayak or canoe straightforward and safe.
Other objects of the invention will be apparent from the description that follows.